I guess this really is the only time I bother to open my journal. This time, nothing at all happened. I don’t think anyone even knows that I’d been drinking. But I believe I pushed myself closer toward alcohol poisoning than ever before. I drank a fifth two days in a row. I woke up after the second day, purchased a liter of whiskey, and then went to the Panda for food. I’d been up for hours and assumed I was fine. I guess I was still drunk. While waiting for my food at the Panda, the nausea hit and it was unbearable. If my food had taken any longer, I’d have left without it.
I still went home and drank most of the liter.
What I hope was my very last drink (even if it means my very last journal entry) Occurred about 5 or 6 in the morning on 2/26. Adora told Suzi that she tried to wake me up and I yelled at her. I don’t recall that. However, I very specifically recall reaching under my bed, grabbing the liter of Evan Williams, taking a decent sized swig, and hoping that it would make me pass out. Hours before, I had been messaging Baker saying that I was a complete piece of shit who couldn’t even pass out. I didn’t even want to finish the liter at that point …. I just kept trying to pass out, but I would just lay there feeling like shit. Eventually, with only a few finger fulls left, I did pass out.
It couldn’t have been long after that that Adora tried to wake me up. I don’t recall that at all … just that final drink. What has to be my final drink. It burned my throat, but not in the typical way whiskey does. It felt like I’d swallowed both sickness and fire … I felt an overwhelming need to vomit. I made it to the toilet and everything began coming out of both ends. It might have been the absolute lowest point in my life. At some point, as if on its own accord, my hand went through the bottom left pane of the bathroom window. I’m still not sure why I punched the window, but this was the result.
Luckily, that’s not an infection as the picture was taken soon afterwards. That’s fascia the best I can figure. I won’t be able to go back on to the jiujitsu mat until it closes over for fear of bleeding all over the place and fear of infection. Even typing this is difficult, due to the way in which I have to wrap my hand.
I’m not sure how I managed to accomplish it, or how I am able to remember accomplishing it, but I managed to clean and bandage my hand and then put a surgical glove on so that I could shower and clean the shit and vomit off of me.
I recall smoking during this bender as well, in spite of having missed nearly a week of jiujitsu and lifting due to a fever and cough. I also recall that this binge was preceded by a binge maybe half as bad. And that binge was preceded by one before it. Each of them making me wonder what type of permanent damage I was doing. I would have loose stools and eliminate food I’d eaten a half hour to an hour before. That would alternate with constipation. This can be a sign of blockage. Possibly from inflammation caused by the drinking.
The last time Suzi had discovered my drinking was sometime last September. I think it was kinda sorta well controlled at that point. She’d even known I was drinking a few times, as I had admitted it when she asked. We had an agreement that I’d be discrete but honest. Then, she’d found me on the couch passed out one night before leaving for work and asked if I’d been drinking. I said that I had. Two days later she was threatening to leave and go to her mother’s. I’d argued that nothing had changed in our agreement … that I had been discrete and that I’d answered honestly. She said that she tolerated the drinking while I was in school, but that I had to stop now that I was done before something bad happened.
I promised to quit until at least boards and made it a few months straight. I fucked up a few times before boards (once when Lemmy died), but kept getting back on track. I felt like I was really doing it. I went on and on about how much better I felt … about how the anxiety was gone (replaced with anger … but still I’d rather be angry than scared), how I had so much more confidence, how I felt like I could actually accomplish anything …. and all that was true. I was even doing two a days with jiujitsu and lifting several days a week and felt great (aside from the painful shoulder and elbow). I honestly did feel so much better.
Except the overwhelming stress that continued to build with time. Unrelenting. There was no escape from it. I remember nights I would drive around for hours smoking cigarettes just so I would not drink. I did this on Christmas night. I was really trying, but eventually the stress got the best of me. And the booze provided instantaneous relief, as it does. It washed it away the woes while also eliminating a large chunk of my persona and potential.
I want my potential. And I don’t think I can do this on my own. I may need to research medications that help with stress while not interfering with athletic performance or cognitive abilities. I meditated every single day for months and it definitely helped, but it wasn’t enough. Not during my weakest, worst moments.
It is also worth noting that during the time I was sober, I stopped doing much of anything else but going to the gym. I stopped studying for boards until about a week and a half out. I had the holidays, but that wasn’t why I couldn’t seem to make myself open a book. I also stopped working on the house. I wasn’t even playing video games, as I’d only want to play dark souls and it made me more stressed. I did a lot of “personal growth” type reading and youtube watching …. Lots of Robert Greene, Tim Ferriss, etc …. And it was great, but it was without action. So many nights, so much energy went into not drinking, that I had no energy or will power left for anything else.
I felt like I was dying during this last hang over. I moved from my computer chair, to my bed, to my meditation cushion, over and over, spitting into a bucket and moaning. My intestines felt like they were trying to turn inside out. There was nothing I could do to get comfortable and every time the nausea and pain seemed to pass, it came back with a vengeance. Probably acute gastritis. It lasted about 48 hours and I was wondering if I was going to have to go to the hospital. At one point I ate half a banana, not even a quarter of an apple, and a few bites of a fiber bar and I almost couldn’t get it down because of the pain. Thirty hours or so later, it still hits me in the gut here and there, though it’s mild.
Every single time, I say that is the worst I’ve ever felt. I say that one day someone is going to find me dead. And I mean it each time. Not because I have forgotten how bad it was the time before, but because it really is worse each time. I wonder how close I pushed it this time. I cracked a liter of Evan Williams just as a horrible hangover was coming on and managed to finish almost all of it in a night. I can’t romanticize it anymore. I can’t pretend this will not happen again. It will. And it will be worse. I don’t ever want to feel the way I did the other night. And if I ever one up it, I very well could kill myself. I don’t want to worry about giving myself various types of cancer anymore. Though, even if I never drink again, Ill worry about what these past few years have done to me for a long, long time. Maybe indefinitely.
I’ve wondered if part of this all was from feeling lost. I have been a student for 10 years, and I am no longer. I can’t say that I miss it, but a large part of my identity just disappeared. I also haven’t been able to heal my elbow or my shoulder and my hips are getting worse. I’ve been worried that I’ll no longer be able to lift the way I have been. That I’ll no longer be “a lifter.” I am terrified of losing that part of my identity.
I have also been worried about starting the next chapter of my life. I am worried that I’m going to end up at a skilled nursing facility instead of being able to practice what I’m actually passionate about. Or at least what I hope I’m passionate about …. What if I find out that even the perfect job working with athletes is still just a grind.
I’m terrified of grinding out my time.
My primary purpose right now has to be figuring out my purpose. When I couldn’t bring myself to do anything else, I went to the gym religiously. I am going to continue researching FMS, SFMA, etc. Instead of watching endless hours of Tim Feriss videos (though the 4 hour work week may be worth recreational night reading), I will research my elbow and shoulder and actively , consistently, persistently try to fix them. I will seek out other people to help in the gym. I need to figure out if it’s really what I want to do, or simply a job I’ll use for a pay check while I work towards whatever else.
I will also do a little writing each day. Maybe not this much. And it doesn’t have to be a journal. Just something else other than a facebook post. It could be fucking poetry. I don’t care … but I want to figure it out by the end of the week.
Writing and sports therapy (which could definitely be combined) are my only two ideas right now. Having my own gym/ facility / youtube channel / articles on t-nation or some such site all fit into that. But I have to start doing it .. if nothing else than to determine that’s not what I’m going to do.
I like the idea of making my first few hours of each day about production rather than consumption. No emails, media, texts, etc. until I’ve written something. For the next week or two, certain emails will be considered “productive” as I search for employment.
Honing all of this is will be a process, but I need to become active in the process. I need to be producing. I really don’t want to remodel this house myself, only because I don’t want to be stuck in it longer than I need to be … so I need to figure out a way to pay for it quickly. I am glad that I’ve read / watched a lot of Ferriss as of late … it’s at least gotten the wheels turning. I’m also sort of kind of glad I bottomed out again. I am hoping that if I dig my way back out on my own, not because I’m doing it for Suzi or anyone else, that I’ll keep my momentum.
